“Like what?” My head pounded from the strain of waiting for him to get to the point.
“You didn’t kill Claire.”
I smiled. “I know that.”
“I didn’t kill Claire.”
“I never thought you did.”
I never even considered it, even though he has plenty of motive.
“Price Whitaker surely didn’t kill Claire.”
“How can you be so sure?” I asked, revealing all of my doubts about the doctor.
I might have set him up, but he let himself get suckered into the compromising position.
“Because Sudha killed her.”
The fallout from his declaration blew like a nuclear blast scouring the surface of my psyche. “Sudha? No way.” I laughed without the slightest iota of mirth. “I told you something was off about that woman. She’s always acted courteous, but she has this deep well of…I don’t know…darkness. The looks she gives me…gave me. I told you something was wrong with her.”
“Yes. You did. You were right. When I found out she was giving you a barbiturate and an anticonvulsant, I fired her.”
“A barb…and an… What? I can’t take that stuff with cyclosporine. That combo could have killed me.”
“She was
trying
to kill you.”
“Why?”
His mouth twisted. “She had some strange and convoluted reasons. I’m not sure you really want to know.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Where did she get the drugs from?”
“Jackson Prentiss.”
The last name Prentiss peeled like a clanging bell, but I couldn’t quite recall the man. “Who’s he?” I asked.
He waited at least a minute before answering me. “The man you were talking to when you passed out at the party.”
“Oh. Okay. Is he related to—”
“Alex Prentiss.”
“Isn’t he—”
“Rhonda’s husband.” His lips curled into a semi-smile.
“The woman who—”
“Donated your heart.” He started laughing, hard and unrestrained.
“Anson, this isn’t funny. Why are you laughing at me?”
“I’m not laughing at you. It’s just that…” He couldn’t finish the thought for the rolling chuckles tumbling up from his gut and barreling out of his mouth.
“Just that what?” I fumed at him. “I’m starting to feel a bit…offended.”
He laughed harder.
“Will you stop that?”
He wiped the remains of his laughter from his lips. “I’m sorry. It’s just that we’ve been finishing each other’s sentences the last couple of weeks. It makes me think you still remember some things.”
“What does that mean?” My hopes raised their heads like daisies in the morning sunshine.
He didn’t answer me, leaving a slight smirk trailing across his suddenly improved features. His smile looked good on him. “Jackson Prentiss and Sudha met each other here in California.” It seemed he was trying to convey something to me that I just wasn’t getting. “Anyway, you confronted her about tampering with your meds and she pulled your gun on you.”
“My gun? That’s brazen. Is that why I’m here?” I ran my fingers over my torso, finding no obvious gunshot wounds.
“She missed.” He bit the words out.
I shifted on the hard hospital bed. Every bone in my body creaked from physical abuse. I noticed the fresh bruise on my forearm. Then another announced its location on my hip. The first inkling that something tremendous had transpired while I was unconscious filtered into my tired mind. “I’m a nurse. I should know better than to—”
“Yes, you should.”
“So where is she? Is she in jail?” I asked.
“Prentiss killed her.”
“Why?” The first twinge of a memory snarked into my subconscious, giving credence to my earlier intuition.
“Because he thought she told you his secrets.”
My argument escaped in a slow procession of thoughts. “She never told me anything about anybody she knew from California. I didn’t even know she
was
from California.”
“She wasn’t. She lived here barely a year. Just long enough. Prentiss tried to kill you…or rather he tried to get you to kill yourself because of what he thought she told you.”
“Whoa. I get the idea that there’s a lot more you’re not telling me.” It was time I confronted him about his irritating habit. “Stop dropping this on me in bits and pieces. So what did I know?”
“You don’t remember?”
“No. How would I know anything about the man? I never met him.” Instinct clicked the facts into place. “Does what you’re not telling me have anything to do with Dr. Crane?”
“Yes.” His answer was wary.
“It’s not what I knew. It’s what Jackson knew about me. He knows that—”
“Jennifer?” Anson interrupted me before I spilled my guts.
“What?”
“You’re Crane’s daughter, not his wife. And that was Crane’s motive for finding you a heart outside the transplant list.”
The decisive moment arrived. The thing I needed to tell him burst on the scene before I was ready for it.
“How do you know about that?” I asked, afraid Marnie beat me to it.
“You told me. You showed me the newspaper clippings.”
“I did?”
He smiled again, a melancholy, aching sort of smile. “A lot happened the last few weeks.” His face softened. The angry lines weakened.
“I wanted to tell you myself. I asked Marnie to wait. I promised her I would tell you—”
“I know. She didn’t tell me. She let you tell me. She’s very upset about that. She thinks she pushed you into it, and that maybe… maybe she should have kept what she knew about Crane’s wife to herself.”
“So I’m not his wife? I’m his daughter?”
“Yes.”
“Then…I’m…so…where does that leave us?”
“Where do you want to go with us?” A very thin smile flitted across his features.
I dropped a heavy load of honesty on his unsuspecting head. “I think that should be up to you.”
“Well, you have messed things up. You had everything confused. You made some bad assumptions. You had a few people ready to wring your neck.” A facetious smile curled his lips. “But Marnie and Price are together. So you didn’t mess that up too much. And I don’t think Brandon Sairs will toss your butt in jail. Not now. As for me…” His intentional pause tantalized me. “As for me, I think I’m over the urge to strangle you.”
“Strangle me? Why?” I sputtered.
An amazing thing happened on the way to my remorse. He stood and dropped the side rail of my torture chamber, sliding in next to me on the hard, narrow mattress. His arm slipped under my shoulders as he pulled me next to him and pushed my head onto his chest. I wanted to ask him what was going on, but the restrained excitement on his face stopped me.
“You really don’t remember the last few weeks?” he asked so softly his question drifted like down on my sensibilities. “Well, you see, I told you I wanted you to be my wife.”
I haven’t been a wife. I’ve been a thorn.
“You did?”
“Uh-huh,” he breathed into my ear.
“And what did I say?”
His non-verbal answer told me everything I needed to know. After an avalanche of kisses, I pushed him back to catch my breath. He wanted another kiss, but I wanted clarification.
“No more pretending?” I asked, hoping he understood what I meant.
“No more pretending,” he agreed.
Other Titles by Denise Moncrief
An Impostor in Town
Purgatory
A word about the author...
Denise is a Southern girl. She's lived in Louisiana all her life. And yes, she has a drawl. She's been writing off and on since she was seventeen. She has a wonderful husband and two incredible children. They not only endure her writing moods but also encourage her to indulge her passion.
She wrote her first "novel" when she was seventeen. It was seventeen handwritten pages on school-ruled paper and an obvious rip-off of the last romance novel she read. The urge to write wouldn't let go of her. In her twenties, she started another novel, only to abandon it after Chapter Four or Five. She started writing seriously about eight years ago and has several stories already published.
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